


Cut Again

by MedicBaymax



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Blood, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Pain, Whump
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-29
Updated: 2015-07-08
Packaged: 2018-04-01 20:18:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 11,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4033180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MedicBaymax/pseuds/MedicBaymax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of Daredevil whump one-shots featuring primarily Matt and Claire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Matt Gets Shot pt. 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! All the one-shots in this fic are from requests I got on tumblr. They have already appeared on my account, but I people seemed to like them so wanted to post them all in one place for seamless reading. Enjoy!

At first the sound of the gunshot was so loud, so piercing, so engulfing that he did not recognize the stabbing pain in his side. There had been a silence in which he’d turned toward the light scrabbling of feet, someone turning, someone pulling a metallic object from its holster… and he’d been too late to move out of the bullet’s path before the sound of gunpowder igniting enveloped him. 

He crouched immediately, still not feeling the pain. His ears were ringing sharply, his sense of hearing momentarily taken out of commission. The concrete was rough against his hands and he refocused, feeling the man run away from the scene through the alley’s pavement. 

Why would he run? Matt thought. He could smell rank sweat, some fresh, some a few days old, on the man’s body. It smelled like fear chased with a tang of pain. The perspiration was laced with several opiates, an amphetamine and something else he couldn’t place. The man was still high, it could be nothing, the sound of a siren a mile off in pursuit of someone else…

But Matt’s hearing was returning and there were no sounds of sirens near enough the man would be able to hear, no other humans within a thirty yard radius even curious about the gunshot. None were leaving their apartments, no one even calling 911. So why would he run? 

And then there was a metallic smell in the air, and Matt was confused for a half a second. He hadn’t injured the man, there had been no blood drawn in the brief fight. Spat. The sound of a single drop of liquid hitting concrete. Not rain. Warm, hot even, thicker than rain…

The man was not worth pursuing, he determined. From their brief encounter, he knew nothing of interest to Matt. Matt stood sharply, and only now as his head swam along with a sudden, sharp pain in his side did he realize the blood smell, thick in the air, had been his own. 

He remained standing but unmoving, sweeping his surroundings for threats before turning his senses on his own body. A swath of his side was boiling, electric, feeling as though the prongs of a taser was being pressed against it. Hot blood was soaking the area of his shirt and spreading against his skin, cooling and congealing the further it got from its origin. 

He felt himself begin to shake and willed it away. It wasn’t that bad, the bullet went in under the skin about half an inch and straight out the other side intact. There was skin and fat and a little muscle damage, painful but nothing vital had been hit. Nothing broken. He’d had worse. The man who had run had been a lousy shot. The pain was bad enough though, and he had to will himself even to move. 

He stumbled in the first couple of steps, staggering to the brick wall of the nearest building before forcing himself to stand normally. He felt acid rise in his throat and swallowed it harshly. His stomach felt like it was caving in on itself. 

He took a few seconds to pull the burn phone out with shaking hands, dialing Claire’s number a little too slowly and raising it to his ear. One ring, two rings, three rings. He waited. On the fourth ring the call transferred to an automated voicemail box. He waited for the beep and then hung up and dialed again. Same response. 

Claire’s apartment was six blocks and a fire escape ladder from his current position. If she didn’t answer the phone, odds were she was still at work. Still, she had supplies and if he could stay together enough to break into her place, he could patch himself up. 

Fortunately, there were few people out and about this time of night, and even fewer who cared to notice blood on a black shirt. He’d had no other reason to choose the color. 

Walking normally wasn’t an option without significant pain, and he compromised to stumble slightly, leaning into his injured side and correcting as needed to stay on the sidewalk. The dizziness helped to sell his implied story that he was a drunk returning home from a night at the bars. It was more from pain than bloodloss, he decided, though as he approached the 6th block and the soaking of cold blood reached his knees he started to wish he’d paid more attention to that from the beginning. 

People began to stir in the apartments around him, and a few early risers made their way to the street. For now they were hurrying to offices and bus stations, not paying attention to a man in all black who was staying as quiet as possible. That would change, he figured, when the sun came up. 

He’d been out all night, he realized, and this injury would leave him another few hours behind in getting to the office. If he hurried, he would be able to catch an hour of sleep and pass it off as a missed alarm… 

He made it up the fire escape with the last energy he had, screwing his eyes closed and storing the previously dulling pain somewhere distant as he ripped the wounds open again. He collapsed, gasping, on the landing by her apartment window, feeling a fresh measure of blood well out of the exit wound. He closed his eyes, his whole being exhausted and stressed to breaking from pain. He clasped at the injury, hoping it would stop bleeding in case the very real chance he would pass out came to fruition. 

Matt pressed a button on his watch. Five forty-eight, AM. It chirped calmly. He moaned just quietly enough that anyone on the street at the end of the alley wouldn’t be able to hear him. He let his body settle, to rest for a second before contemplating breaking into Claire’s apartment in the hour before she got home. 

The city was waking up several floors below him. The scents of three different cafes and four bakeries, four variations each of fresh aftershave and stale alcohol met his nostrils passively. The sound of his own blood oozing through the grate below him and dripping slowly to the pavement below that. 

…And the sound of a heartbeat in the apartment next to him. Claire was home, and she was awake. There was no relief, or anger, or really any other emotion in the realization. it was only dogged pragmatism that made his bloody fist hit the glass sliding window. Again. She was in the other room. Again. She didn’t hear him. Again. He was getting so tired. The exhaustion of three days with little sleep combined with the pain combined with the bloodloss was taking the fight out of him. He let his fist hit the grate, incoordination finally getting the better of him. He finally heard her footsteps padding across the carpet. 

He let his mouth form a weak smile. “Hey Claire. Great morning, huh?” He whispered, and passed out.


	2. Matt Gets Shot pt. 2

There was a fist-shaped smear of blood on her window, a long, dark shape lying on the grated fire escape against the brick backdrop of the building across the alley. She didn’t have to think too hard about who it was. His fist came up again, paused desperately, hit the glass and then collapsed still by his side. 

She fought back a short -very short- moment of panic. He’d made it up the fire escape. He’d probably make it a few seconds longer. She opened the sliding window and took him in. 

His teeth were gritted tightly together, his body shaking like she’d just pulled him out of a frozen lake. His hands were covered in blood, and the dark fabric glistened with harsh red liquid from his chest to his knees. His eyes were screwed shut. She couldn’t believe it when he forced out actual words. Hey Claire. Great morning, huh? But then his body went slack and she indulged a second moment of panic. 

“Yeah, screw you too.” She mumbled, pulling herself back into some semblance of nonchalance. All in a night’s work now, though, and she resisted the urge to pull him through the window straight away. Instead, she took a pair of gloves from the box by the door and snapped them onto her hands, hoping he could somehow feel the grief he was giving her in the action. 

She climbed out of the window onto the rickety escape. “You know they sent me home early tonight, right? And all the way home on the subway I thought, ‘hey, wouldn’t it be nice if after getting the shit kicked out of me by a DT’s patient at work, I could come home to your sorry ass on my porch.’” There wasn’t a lot of room on the fire escape and she straddled him out of necessity. “And had that not been utter sarcasm, I would have meant it in a completely different context…” She shook her head. In the dusky grey morning light the two of them must have looked half crazy from the street below, but Matt was the kind of person who could have crawled up the three flights of ladders with four fractured vertebrae and a concussion so she needed to get her assessment underway sooner rather than later.

She forced her hands under his back. She kept forgetting how heavy he was when he was unconscious. At least he was breathing, and she could feel his heart beating a little faster than usual under her hands. “Hey, you know, I like it when people listen to me gritch about my night.” Her fingers traced each of his vertebrae independently, eliciting not so much as a soft whimper as her forearm pressed against his gunshot wound. “If you could wake up that would be even better.” She sighed, hands on hips, planning her next move. 

Satisfied that his head, neck and back were intact, she stood, feeling her own injuries -a couple of bruised ribs and a swollen left eye socket- for the first time since he’d arrived. That made her a little angry, but everything this morning could have been a lot worse and like it or not she’d somehow signed on for this. “Just the GSW then, you’re making my morning easy.” She said, trying to convince herself. “You promise not to bleed too much on my carpet, you might make it to my good list.” 

She went and got the blanket he’d bled on the last time. In the intervening week she’d washed it as well as she could, getting a strange look or two from the woman at the laundromat. Placing it on the floor by the window, she carefully dragged him over the threshold. 

By the time he was inside, his blood covered her scrubs and forearms and she figured she looked like something out of a slasher film. She almost laughed at her decision to use the gloves. She moved a stand lamp over to her new work area, and got the medical kit she hadn’t even put away from last time. 

With trauma shears, she cut the dark fabric away from the wound expertly and peeled it back away from the wounds. The shirt was sodden with congealed blood and clung to his skin as though soaked with gelatin. The skin beneath was dark orange-red with drying blood. She pressed gently against the edges of the wounds. The bleeding had mostly stopped, and there was no indication of blood pooling beneath the wound either, which she appreciated. He moaned quietly. “Oh now you’ve decided to wake up… Just in time for the fun part, I have to warn you.” She said, shaking her head, taking pity on him. “I’ll try to make it quick.” She felt him tense under her hands- he could hear and understand her at least, which was good. 

His abdomen was suddenly ridged, his fingers clawing into the blanket, curling into fists. “Shh, shh, you’re okay, you’re doing great.” She said calmly, putting a hand on his shoulder in an attempt to distract him. “You lost some blood but its not nearly as bad as last time, huh?” 

“Fffffghaah” he said, “hhhaa” and she could tell the noises had been involuntary. He was forcing himself into control. His eyes rolled shut again but this time he din’t go limp. “Do… it.” He forced out. She nodded, knowing he couldn’t see it. 

“Okay.” She dug prefilled saline syringes out of her bag and flushed the wound as well as she could. This was battlefield medicine, non-sterile, lifesaving only, not how she was used to practicing. 

She’d never been taught internal sutures, and she knew she couldn’t figure them out fast enough, and certainly not at this angle with the supplies she had. But the bleeding had stopped and she took that to mean the internal part of the wound had closed itself- at least temporarily. The wound went no further than muscle. She could continue to meet his request to remain outside the hospital for the time being. 

She closed the exterior quickly, marveling at his ability to stay still for it. She covered the outside in an ABD pad and wrapped his torso with self-adhering tape. If her boss could see it she’d have been fired on the spot, but this was a very different world to the hospital she worked at. The improvisation, she felt, had been impressive at least. 

“There, I’m done.” She said, sitting back and watching his tightly controlled writhing fade somewhat. 

“Thank… you.” He said. She took a long, deep breath and watched his chest rise and fall a few times. 

“Asshole.” She said, a small smile of relief creeping onto her face.


	3. Matt is Stubborn, Has Feels

Ultimately, there came a point where he couldn’t sit still any longer.

It was later in the evening in his apartment. Cool night air was finally coming in the open window, and along with it sounds of people shouting and pulsing club music and police sirens. A mix of familiarity, of pain and of lust and longing, the smells of stale fryer grease and garbage and cheap alcohol and urine. What he’d come to know as night in the summer of his city. And his own heartbeat, his own sweat and blood was fading from that cacophony.

He was halfway to the closet before he thought of how stupid it was, even the few steps had been a slow, laborious feat of will. He could feel where his body was cut, where it was torn and had been sewn roughly back together while he’d gritted his teeth against the pain. He could feel the broken segments of his ribs, still swollen and hot, barely fusing themselves back to one another. Could feel his head pounding and his left ankle almost giving way under even these first few steps.

But a block away someone was screaming for her wallet. A quarter mile in the other direction, someone for his life. A convenience store’s alarm was wailing on tenth street, and a pack of teenagers had broken the front window of a basement apartment on second and main- the tinkling of shattering glass still hanging in the air as a child inside began bawling. Those and a thousand others. He’d gotten tired of listening to it.

He had a responsibility to Hell’s Kitchen. Pain was physical, a fact of life. His punishment for not moving fast enough, not training hard enough. He’d had enough rest to be functional again. Any pain that came would only serve as further punishment. He could rest again when Hell’s Kitchen did.

HIs body was singing, as he merged with the falling night. Down at ground level, heat rose from the sidewalk, bringing with it the smells of people, their cologne, body odor, what they’d eaten for lunch. He closed his eyes symbolically beneath the mask, focusing, wading through the world of fire three miles in every direction. Identifying eighteen- no, nineteen- indications of distress and sorting them by proximity and his ability to respond.

In an alley a block and a half from him, behind an ancient dumpster. A drug deal had gone a little further south than usual. He was moving in an instant, staying close to the wall. The cool, light dampness in the air told him the sun had set. He made his way quickly, silently, refusing to allow the pain any hold on his movements. It was only when he stopped, crouching in a back doorway, his ankle absolutely screaming, that he considered slowing down.

It was too late now, though, to make that decision. He’d committed to this poor wreck of a human being getting the shit kicked out of him over a drain grate on the alley floor. 

“Leave, now.” He said, slowly and evenly. HIs body was perfectly balanced, perfectly poised to endure his current injuries. He knew he cut a menacing figure, that by now these men would know of the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, would know he wasn’t one they wanted to tangle with. To be completely honest, it didn’t matter a whole lot to him. There would be pain tonight regardless of whether these men decided to turn their fists and feet on him instead. Hopefully if that happened the man would have the good sense to run.

One of the attacker’s feet slid a few inches on the pavement, turning toward Matt. The other two continued with their beating. He began to laugh. “Hey, check this guy out.” The muffled thuds of feet hitting flesh ceased, similar scratching on the concrete told Matt he had their attention now. The man on the floor moaned pitifully. 

“Who you, man?” Footsteps towards him. The attacker on the left came within inches of Matt’s face. He had neither shaved nor brushed his teeth in a little over a week. Matt set his jaw.

“Leave, now.” Matt repeated, low and angry. Left Attacker was an inch and a half taller than he was an a good thirty pounds heavier. Matt assumed he thought he was being sneaky, but Matt caught the movement of his balled fist a second before it was swinging towards his face. He stepped back easily, all pain forgotten in the sudden release of adrenaline. The two others moved forward as Matt dodged the blow. A second blow, this time from the man on the right he blocked, throwing himself out of the way. He ended up by Left and managed to knee him in the groin before Center landed the first real punch of the fight.

It was a jab, nothing more, but it was to Matt’s already damaged ribs. He felt the bone slip violently, grating against the raw, healing fracture. Center got three more savage hits in before Matt pulled himself back together. An uppercut threw Center off guard, and Right came to his aid a second too late. He got Matt’s elbow to the side of his jaw and staggered away momentarily. “Fuck, man.” 

But Left had waddled back over to the fight and Matt, distracted, turned a second too late, feeling his shoulders forced down into the man’s knee. Matt gaped, unable to draw breath. He couldn’t sense the attackers anymore, feeling as though his ribcage was splintering under the man’s weight. 

Screaming. He was screaming now, joining the other sounds of distress in the city. He’d failed. He spat blood, feeling it run down the side of his face as he felt his shoulder strike cement. The least pain in his body, and it had probably dislocated. His hands scrabbled uselessly around his torso, trying to find something to guard but it was all too raw to hold or comfort. He shuddered in agony, a wail of torture cut short as he spat vomit across the ground. The smell overwhelmed him but he couldn’t move nor block it out. Every cough was unbearable. 

But the attackers had left. A few people had taken notice of his screams on the street, but a man being mugged in an alley was hardly novelty in Hell’s Kitchen. They knew the price of getting involved, and it wasn’t worth it.

Finally, slowly, he quieted. He lay still against the cooling cement. The man on the grate was unmoving, silent, no longer moaning. Matt couldn’t hear a heart beat. Failed. 

His senses broadened and flattened across the city. Hell’s Kitchen was crying, in pain, in need of someone, anyone who wasn’t it’s Devil.

A tear hit the pavement that had nothing to do with his ribs.


	4. Matt is Deaf

Matt focused. The warehouse was blocks away but swarming with guards. He couldn’t risk being seen. Not at this point, not in a place he would be known of and questioned. He was on a roof at the very edge of the residential area of Hell’s Kitchen. Cool night air played on his exposed skin, and the mosquitoes were finally dying down for the night. Made it easier to focus when there weren’t a million buzzing bodies between him and his mark. 

He crouched at the edge of his perch. He could hear what was going on inside- some kind of society meeting. Plans for a man’s death. An official hit order going out with more than a million for the man’s head to a room of more than 30 trained killers. Important guy, then. Nothing to indicate Matt- barely a relief in this instance. He didn’t care all that much about the meeting itself. He was only catching snippets of conversation, focusing far more intently on one particular occupant of the room. A heart beating slightly faster, slightly faster. 

The man was sweating, nervous, though with the air of someone who had been trained to control it, to put on a show of confidence. He was sitting in one of the inconspicuous middle seats of a long conference table. Hiding. Waiting. Someone who wasn’t supposed to be there as much as Matt. 

And then Matt figured it out, a second too late, focusing so intently on the man’s heartbeat that he didn’t hear the clicking of a button in the man’s hand until the entire building ripped itself apart. The shockwave tore into neighboring buildings and threw Matt backward, sprawling, onto the apartment building’s roof. 

And the second his back hit the shingles, the fire went out. Suddenly, startlingly, everything just ceased. 

At first he thought he must have been knocked unconscious. There was no input, nothing he could connect or compute to make a picture with. Sound was utterly, absolutely, gone. He focused intently, in utter denial. There were no longer the buzz of mosquitoes in the air, no longer the sounds of a rooftop bbq a few buildings over or a shopkeeper on the street below closing the security cage on her wares. Nothing. 

But, he thought, that wasn’t exactly true. The sound was still there, but the specifics had been exchanged for a loud, incessant ringing. This had happened before. Gunshots in closed spaces and taking significant blows to the head had temporarily rendered him functionally deaf in the past. So he took a slow breath, lying still, waiting for the fire to light itself again. 

Seconds passed. Minutes. With each increment of time the panic grew ever so slightly. But he was trained, he tamped it down, took deep, slow breaths. It would pass, it would pass, he told himself. It could have been a full hours’ time before the thought that this instance could possibly, horribly, be something different entirely.

There were vibrations suddenly in the shingling under his worn body. He pressed his hand against it, grateful for any form of input in his current abyss. He stilled, refocusing now on vibration. Even with his heightened level of sensing, feeling vibration was soft and fuzzy- a world more of muted radio static than fire. Given time he might be able to refine it. For now, however, it was a pittance. 

The vibrations indicated there was someone on the roof with him. Someone coming towards him. Faster. Gait indicated male, 190 pounds. Poor center of gravity. Smelled like faded aftershave and fresh sweat and a hint of garlic and alcohol and crappy coffee. 

“Foggy.” He couldn’t hear himself but he felt his mouth and throat form the word. Apprehension left over from before his best friend had learn the truth of the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen swept over him. But he had too much to worry about, and his friend was here and presumably would help. 

He was sure Foggy was talking, swearing possibly. He had no way to sense it, or refine it from any other sound in the area. He knew approximately where the man was, no more. “I can’t hear.” He explained, feeling his own breath catch in his throat. He felt Foggy stop moving, maybe pausing in thought. 

There was then a point of pressure on Matt’s chest. Foggy’s index finger. The point of pressure moved, tracing something out on Matt’s chest. “H” A short pause. “O” Another, shorter pause. “S-P-I-T-A-L-?” 

“No.” Matt said vehemently, shaking his head. A pause. 

“P-L-E-A-S-E-?”

“Can’t” Matt affirmed. He was probably being stupid. The deafness had felt temporary, but it had been long enough that he was beginning to question whether that was fact or merely denial. They both stayed still for a moment. “Help?” He said finally. The words had a note of finality to them, of tiredness, and pain and a growing fear. He was giving in, trusting Foggy. He had no way to resist. 

He felt a warm hand on his shoulder, and another grasped his hand. He let Foggy help him struggle upright, his body protesting. As he stood, vibrations came through the top of the building from police cars and ambulances on the street below. The air had continued to cool as night had fallen, the smell of tar from the shingles felt sharper now. If he woke up tomorrow and everything was back to normal, so be it. But even if it wasn’t, the rising smell of acrid smoke from the explosion was indication that the city still needed him. 

If he woke tomorrow and his hearing had still not returned; if this was, in fact, permanent, he resolved that he would continue to fight with everything he had left. 

Foggy lead him to the door. His surroundings currently were a mystery to him, silent and dark. Communication nearly impossible. But there were other ways. He just needed to focus, to train- push himself. Hold himself to a higher standard. He was the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. No excuses, no giving in.


	5. Matt Struggle Busses it Breathing-Wise

It was 2:38 AM and Matt was exhausted. Lying still on Claire’s couch, he was almost ready to give up- even if he would never admit it. He’d been pretty sick a few times before, really sick maybe one other time in his life. This time was beating that out by a long shot.

Broken ribs, then flu that he’d done his utmost to ignore, then bacterial infection in his lungs. Pneumonia until he couldn’t continue fighting through it. Until he’d given in and collapsed on Claire’s doorstep a few moments after she’d returned home from work. 

Now his chest was on fire, lungs feeling as though they were filled with molasses. He was taking short, fast, tight breaths, forcing the air through swollen, fluid-filled lung tissue on willpower alone. He could hear himself breathing- the sound of it drowning out most of the sounds outside a 5 meter radius. Vulnerable. Across the room, he knew Claire could hear it too. She was thinking. Coming to a conclusion he didn’t like.

“I’m calling the hospital.” At first he couldn’t get up the breath or energy to protest. He was so very tired but afraid to sleep for fear his innate ability to breathe wouldn’t be sufficient to keep him drawing breath. The pulse ox clip on his finger was beeping, the shrill sound cutting through his labored, wheezing gasps. If he lost momentum now he feared the alarm would never stop. 

His chest was screaming. Pain, sharp and grating, cut a path between the broken ribs on his right side. Every breath was agony- the balance between air hunger and pain a finely wrought round of tug-of-war. 

With as much energy as he could muster, he shook his head. 

“What the hell, Matt?” Claire said, anger bubbling to the surface. She was tired, he could sense it. Not quite at his point yet but she was doing this after a sixteen hour day that should have ended eight hours ago. She didn’t need this. Even so, he needed her to understand what was at stake.

“Give me… a chance.” He said. Suffocating. 

“If I wait another hour I’ll have a corpse on my couch.” Her voice was serious. He could hear her arms waving, coming to rest nervously across her chest. Her heart rate picked up. He was reminded of the night he first met her. We need to talk about what happens when you die right here on my couch. “I’m not cremating you in my damn oven, Matt.” It took him a good minute to recover enough oxygen to speak. 

“Forty… five minutes… then.” He gasped out. “S’it” The resulting pain and air hunger sent a wave of fresh sweat across his face and arms. His breathing quickened, the alarm sounded off shrilly, causing pain in his ears he was too weak to block out. He clamped his eyes shut tight, willing the accompanying nausea to pass. If that was the result of a few words of protest, he didn’t want to experience vomiting. 

The heat of his skin quickly evaporated the perspiration, adding to the sticky, miserable feeling. He could almost feel steam rising off his skin. The blanket underneath him was damp and cold. Claire had replaced it three times already. 

After a few minutes of quiet, the beeping thankfully stopped. 

“If I leave for ten minutes, will you be breathing when I get back?” She asked finally, matter-of-factly. He gave her a look that probably came off as more pathetic than reassuring. He couldn’t speak now. Seconds away from passing out, he thought. He couldn’t tell her that. He pulled together a last burst of energy and nodded. 

She looked uncertain. But finally she left, returning six minutes later with a transport tank of O2. He heard her bump it against the door as she carried it in. He’d somehow fought the impending and unsettlingly welcome threat of unconsciousness for the eternity he’d been alone. She set the hollow tank by the end of the couch and started fitting tubing to it. 

“My neighbor on the 6th floor, she’s got emphysema. This is her emergency tank in case the power goes out and her condenser stops working.” She explained, begrudgingly. “I’ve driven her to the hospital a few times. I was hoping to never have to cash in that favor.” She finished. 

“Don’ need. Give… back.” He gasped. A few seconds later the shrill beeping started up again. Claire ignored him and continued to untangle the tubing somewhere on the right of his head. It was getting more difficult to judge distances. He couldn’t tell if that was because he was slowly losing consciousness or if fluid was building up in his ears too. 

He felt her loop the cannula around his face, but he was too weak to bat it away. A few seconds later cool air hit his nose. They sat quietly for a few minutes. 

He still felt like he was trying to breathe through water, still felt like his chest was ripping apart with each breath. The panic, though, the air hunger, had subsided. The horrible beeping had stopped and he began to feel as though he could hang on a few more minutes. 

“Thank you.” He said finally, quietly. 

“Doesn’t change anything.” Claire said. She sounded disappointed, angry. “Buys you a few hours, maybe. You still need IV antibiotics, pain meds, Prednisone, breathing treatments. Things I can’t give you here, Matt.” She sounded exhausted, sad and a bundle of other things he couldn’t identify. She sounded like a mother who was at the end of her rope with a belligerent son. He hated that. 

“Then give me the few hours.” He said resolutely, his voice cracking a tiny bit. Tears starting, hot on his face. They were only partially from pain. He was done, so tired, so hurting. And he couldn’t even tell her. There was no reason he should refuse medical care here. No reason at all. The pneumonia wasn’t an injury caused by his work as Daredevil. He could easily explain that he’d been mugged, had his wallet taken in an alley on the way home from work, his ribs broken. That he didn’t have insurance- had been afraid he wouldn’t be able to pay and so had waited… But that wasn’t the issue. 

He hadn’t been to a hospital since the accident. Doctor’s offices, sure. There had been a nurse who came to the orphanage a few times to check him over. But an actual, real hospital? It had been close to twenty years. He couldn’t remember anything good about them. Just pain, fear, and blindness. Hospitals were where nightmares started. Imprinted on his mind. “Please.” He begged.


	6. Matt Gets Trapped Under a Chunk of Ceiling

Sound moves significantly faster through solid materials than air. It was a fact Matt knew long before eighth grade science lab when a student teacher had tapped a tuning fork on a piece of PVC. Sound moves faster still through denser materials, the waves riding on tightly packed molecules. Fast through concrete. Really, really fast through steel. He’d been able to pick out a length of iron rebar in a concrete wall since he was 10.

Now, he let the final thundering sound waves pass through a piece of cinderblock that lay not half a foot from his head. Listening, intently, at the sudden quiet. Not silence, not at all, but just as jarring after a solid twenty minutes of shattering glass and frantic yelling and chunks of ceiling raining down from two floors above.

It was a writhing sort of quiet, too. A buzzing- the sounds of shock and frantic uncertainty slowly crescendoing as the immediate danger passed. Hearts were still beating frantically, small children crying for their parents through dust-filled air. A symphony of text notifications and ringtones going unanswered.

Everywhere he could sense, people were poised for a second, tensed, before the weight of what they’d just lived through fully dawned on them.

Matt forced himself inward. Even the “quiet” version of the mall was suddenly overwhelming, and he needed to take stock before he could move to help anyone else.

Scratches adorned most exposed skin across the left side of his body. They stung but were ultimately inconsequential. His shoulder hurt as though he’d driven it into the ground. In the melee he couldn’t remember how or when that had occurred, only that it must have for him to be lying here. His left leg was sandwiched between a portion of fallen ceiling tile and the floor and he flinched as his survey scrutinized it for injury. The lower half burned, hot, like someone was holding a brand to the skin. But he could feel his feet and toes, could move his leg where the chunk of ceiling allowed, could move his ankle. Superficial, then. He’d been lucky this time.

Outside himself, the world had begun to roar again. People sobbing in pain and shock. People talking yelling into cell phones. Sharp intakes of breath that indicated injuries. People wheezing through the dusty air. Disrupted patterns of breathing. The smells of blood and vomit and marrow and tears and fresh urine and spilled cleaning supplies and several stores’ worth of broken perfume bottles and lotion and candles all vying for his attention.

He almost made himself shut down again, but that was not an option. He took two slow, deep breaths, the brick dust coating his nose and mouth and throat and almost making him gag. Blood was pooling below the injury on his leg. He could feel it hot against his torn, swelling skin and cold against the epoxy floor. He was shaking. He coughed. Unacceptable.

“Matt!” Foggy’s voice, edged with panic, emerged from the cacophony and mixed with the smell of his sweat and aftershave. Cement dust drifted from him but Matt could smell no blood on him to indicate injury. Matt sat slowly, not completely trusting his body to have truthfully assessed himself for injury. “Don’t move, buddy, the building came down.” Foggy’s breath was coming in pants.

“I noticed.” Matt said, calmly, distracted, “You okay, Foggy?”

“Yeah, yeah I’m good.” He was moving constantly, his head twitching from side to side. Adrenalin was running high. Not fully panicking, but close to it. “Are- are you hurt, Matt?”

Some blood was soaking up Matt’s pant leg, but the rest of the injury was hidden beneath the chunk of ceiling. “I’ll live.” Matt said truthfully. The lost control over sensory input was far worse than the injury. He focused hard, trying to pull it back in check. Claire wasn’t coming up on his radar, but his radar was crowded with a thousand other things. No reason to worry, he told himself.

“Matt, you’re bleeding!” So is everyone else, Matt thought, cringing. There was a dampness on his face. Scalp wounds bled a lot, unfortunately. Didn’t mean they were anything to worry about.

Foggy wasn’t going for his face, though. He was trying to move the chunk of ceiling that was pinning Matt to the floor. “It’s fine, I’m okay.” Matt said deliberately. Calmly. In a way that should have conveyed that he was not at all worried about the growing patch of blood under his lower leg and the wound it represented. He kept his breath even as Foggy tried to force the piece of rubble up and out of the way, heard him grunt with effort as the tile lifted slightly and grated against his leg in a way that was way more painful than it should have been. “Leave it, Foggy.” He paused, the words having no effect on his determined friend. “Foggy! Stop!” The weight came back down on his leg and his head swam. He tasted bile.

“Shit, Matt.”

“I’m okay.”

“Like hell you are.”

“Lot of other people need help, here, Foggy.”

“Lotta other people aren’t you, Matt. That’s a lot of blood.” He wanted to tell Foggy that people bled, that it wasn’t a big deal, that he had worse on any given Tuesday night. Foggy was being a friend, a really good one at that, but Matt had a visceral dislike for special treatment. He didn’t need it and he certainly didn’t deserve it. There was a short moment of uneasy quiet between them as Matt weighed how much better and worse the situation would be made by him throwing up.

“Have you seen Claire?” He asked instead, changing the subject and swallowing bile again.

“No” Foggy said, turning to survey the area. “You know where she was when everything went to hell?”

“There.” Matt pointed, sensing her voice for the first time in the discord. She was as calm as he was outwardly, but there was an edge of pain in her voice, her heart beating hard and fast. Focusing as hard as he could, he could smell blood on her. She was hurt worse than he was. Talking to someone else. Putting pressure on someone else’s wound. Hiding it. Foggy would want her to come over here. She’d do it. He couldn’t have that. It wasn’t that bad.

As much as it ached to have her hurt, she was doing her job. He could respect her for that even if he didn’t approve of it. Foggy had already turned to get her. “Wait, Foggy. I changed my mind, help me up?” He asked. Foggy stopped for a second. Matt could imagine his confusion even if he couldn’t sense it objectively. “Just lift it up a little, I’ll pull my leg out.” Matt said reasonably. He was pretty sure the wound was exclusively external. Deep, the blood confirmed, but it didn’t smell or feel like there was any bone involved, so moving shouldn’t do that much damage… 

“Okay…” he felt Foggy come around his side and get a grip under the piece of ceiling. “Ready?” He asked. Matt nodded, setting his face and gritting his teeth in preparation.

“Hhhgggh” Matt let out a controlled grunt, forcing his leg out from under the chunk of ceiling. He screwed his eyes shut and forced his back against the cool floor and his breathing under control. The piece of ceiling hit the floor again, this time without his leg for padding.

“Whoa, Matt don’t move, okay?” Foggy said, his voice suddenly overtaken by calm. Matt froze. It was not a good voice out of Foggy. “You got a big piece of glass in your leg.” Matt relaxed. That wasn’t great but it wasn’t life threatening yet. And it explained the extra pain. So he wasn’t just going soft. That was actually pretty reassuring.

“Wha- what color’s the blood?” Matt asked. Sound through concrete and sound through glass moved at similar speeds, he wasn’t exactly shocked he hadn’t figured it out through the rest of the competing sensory input.

“Uuuh, red, like usual.” Foggy said.

“Dark or bright?” He grimaced.

“Dark, I think?” Foggy said uncertainly.

“My kinda day.” Matt said, the edge of his mouth curling up in a wry smile. Small miracles, the blood was from a vein, not an artery. The glass was still in his leg- a long, thin shard about six inches wide and two deep, stuck longways into his flesh about an inch. He took his jacket off and carefully tied the sleeves around the top and bottom to stabilize it. Through the continuing chaos, the fire and emergency medical systems from other counties were arriving, backup to the forces already working.

Matt didn’t even have to ask as Foggy pulled Matt’s arm around his shoulders. More slowly than Matt would have liked, they made their way over to Claire.


	7. Matt, Claire and Foggy Re-enact SGA's "Trio" in a Subway

Tink. The sound of metal groaning, sharp and urgent, cut through the ringing in Matt’s ears. Tink tink. Tink tink tink tink. His face was pressed into rotted wooden debris from the floor above. The slimy planks smelling like gray water and mold. He shifted slightly, splintered wood falling sideways off his back. The room echoed. Concrete. Below ground. Tink tink tink tink tink tink. 

He forced himself onto his back, groaning as his body protested the movement. Pain in his side and the underside of his arm, he noted. There were several long, burning scratches in both areas, complemented by a rapidly swelling bruise down his ribs. He must have scraped it along the side of the ground they’d fallen through. Tink, tink, ta-tink, ta-tink, ta-tink. The difficulty with moving suggested he’d actually managed to crack one of the ribs, but all things considered, he figured he’d gotten off pretty easy. He could work with a cracked rib.

He rose to a kneeling position and focused on his surroundings. He was crouched in a wide, hollow dip in a long cement corridor, almost longer than his ‘radar’ sense was able to detect. It branched off about thirty yards behind him. Metal tracks. A dry, stale smell, with a hint of rubber and mechanical lubricant. The same air circulated infinitely through an ancient system of vent ducts and fans… Ta-tink, ta-tink, ta-tink, ta-tink. The air pressure was changing. Fuck.

There were two other heartbeats in the tunnel with him. One, Claire’s, was on the narrow maintenance platform a few feet up and to his right. She was moving slightly, he could hear her shift in the debris scattered around them. Thankfully, most of it had been soft, rotted wood- the concrete through the tunnel ceiling had disintegrated to a more sandy consistency. A definite problem for the trains, he realized. 

Speaking of trains, there was a rushing sound in the distance he definitely didn’t like. Claire stopped moving. She’d begun to hear it too. 

“Matt?” She asked. Her voice was deliberate, calm, coherent. She’d been trained well. Not necessarily for this, maybe, but trained none the less. “Foggy?” 

A low moan came from the direction of the other heartbeat. Foggy, until now, had been still. At the sound of Claire’s voice, he seemed to startle awake. Matt could smell blood on him. 

“Foggy, stay still.” He ordered. The rushing sound was closer, there was a garbled mix of speech now he was catching from the hundreds of people packed inside the subway cars.

“…matt?” Foggy’s voice was guarded, weak sounding. Matt navigated the debris over to his friend. Claire hadn’t moved from her position on the maintenance platform, which worried him somewhat, but he didn’t have time to question it. 

“I’m here, Foggy. You, me and Claire, we’re in a subway tunnel. Fell through the roof. We’re working on figuring some things out right now.” He didn’t elaborate. The train was coming closer. Claire took notice. 

“Foggy, we’re under a kind of deadline. I’m going to ask you some questions. I need you to answer them truthfully.” There was a slight edge to her voice now, but Matt couldn’t tell if it was simply pressure from the idea that they were in the path of an oncoming train, or pain from injuries she hadn’t made apparent. He should have demanded her status immediately. The train was getting closer to the junction behind them. 

“S-sure thing.” Foggy said. He heard Claire let out a slow breath.

“Does anywhere hurt?” She asked. There was a pause. 

“Foggy?” Matt demanded. Claire was keeping her cool a little better than he was. He was impressed. 

“Yeah, yeah. Uuh, like the top part of my shoulder? All over that. Top part of my back.” 

“Okay, is there anywhere you can’t move or feel?” She asked. It was a rough assessment- they didn’t exactly have time to be precise. 

“I don’t think so.” 

“Good. Matt, without moving him, I need you to feel along his spine. You’re looking for anything that’s sticking out differently or feels particularly swollen. Foggy, you say if anything Matt does hurts.” Any other situation, Matt would have refused, citing a lack of medical training. But instead, he forced his hands under Foggy’s back. He moved as quickly and deliberately as he could, uncertain of what he was looking for but trusting that Claire would have been more exact if there was anything he wouldn’t necessarily be able to feel. TA-TINK, TA-TINK, TA-TINK. The train was right up on the junction now. 

“Shit, SHIT!” Foggy shouted. Tensing underneath Matt. “MATT THERE’S A TRAIN! SHIT MATT THERE’S A TRAIN BEHIND YOU, MATT!” Before Matt had finished his assessment, Foggy wrenched Matt’s hands out from under him. He twisted, clearly no longer feeling his own injuries, and wrestled one leg under Matt’s body. With the sudden adrenalin it was enough to force him off Foggy and hard into the concrete side of the track well. 

Pain exploded along Matt’s side as he fell between the track and the side of the track well- certain death if the train rolled over them. Claire’s raised but still amazingly calm voice carried over the panic, calling for them to calm down, to sit tight, that everything would be fine just please stay still. Matt forced the pain and shouting to the back of his mind, throwing himself back over Foggy, forcing his hands underneath the two of them and pinning his friend to the middle of the tracks, covering him with his own body to keep him down and still. 

He waited, tensed, as the sound of the train swelled. One second, two seconds, three seconds. An infinite amount of time. Claire stopped yelling. Matt blocked everything out, waited, Foggy’s writing body protesting wildly under him while he locked down and waited to be hit by the train. 

Instead of the roaring tube of metal shearing over them, however, the sound slowly began to fade. Matt let himself breathe, feeling his left side burning, dulled somewhat by the adrenalin. Foggy quieted finally. The train had taken the other side of the junction. 

Matt released his friend tentatively and rolled to the side, tasting blood where he’d bitten the inside of his cheek. “Stay… still.” He ordered. His body was demanding oxygen, but he kept his breathing calm and even, trying not to aggravate the pain in his ribs. 

“I’m so sorry.” He said finally, tiredly, as the weight of what had just happened dawned on him. This hadn’t gone as expected. Not in the slightest. They’d been together when he’d heard the sound of the gunshot a few blocks distant. When he’d heard the sound of someone crying out in pain, not dead and clearly in dire need. Claire had insisted on coming. Foggy had just tagged along. The scene had been over, the danger passed. 

And then they’d all fallen through the rotted section of warehouse floor on their way to the damn incident. 

There was no response from either of them to the apology. Just the sound of heavy breathing echoing in the tunnel as the next train left the distant station. 

“You good for a minute?” Matt asked Foggy. 

“Yeah.” Foggy gasped back. Matt forced himself to move, from the pain and air hunger. He climbed onto the platform with more effort than he wanted to admit, and made his way slowly over Claire’s still supine form. 

“Where are you hurt?” He asked. The smell of blood on her was stronger than it had been on Foggy. 

“You really can’t help me, Matt.” She said. He’d thought her heart rate had been high just from the exertion of the last few minutes, but that wasn’t the case. 

“Why, what..?” He asked. 

“There’s a piece of wood through my side.” She said. Shit. “Its deep, Matt. Definitely under the muscle… I can’t tell how far.” She paused. “You need to go for help.” Her voice was calm but her heart rate told the whole story. Training could only take you so far. 

Matt could feel his own heart rate rising too. He wanted to argue that he couldn’t leave her and Foggy here alone, that it was his fault and he didn’t want to put them in more danger. But that was stupid, and he nodded instead- glad there was something he could do, even if it was just getting help. He stood slowly. “There’s a blue light probably thirty yards up the platform. There’s probably an emergency call station there.”

“Yeah.” He agreed halfheartedly, sensing out the box mounted into the wall. He turned. 

“And Matt?” She said. 

“What is it?” He asked. 

“I know you won’t stay here to be checked out by the medics, but…” She paused. “You’re not looking so awesome yourself. Get someone to look you over?” It was phrased as a statement, and he nodded, unsure if he would actually follow the instruction. “Thanks.” He took a slow breath, feeling a drop of warm blood trickle down his swollen side. 

He made his way toward the call station.


	8. Matt Probably Has a Broken Leg

This one’s a little rougher than my others, so apologies in advance!

He shouldn’t have been able to make it up the four flights of stairs to Foggy’s apartment. And yet there he was, his right hand gripping the banister so hard it should have probably broken off by now, his chest heaving as quietly as he could manage with the effort. Here he was. Sweating profusely, his hair dampened and sticking slightly to his forehead. Here he was. Blood drying, matting the stubble on the side of his face. Here he was. Cracking a ridiculous smile because he’d made it up those stupidly difficult stairs to his best friend’s fucking apartment. 

There was probably something really, really wrong, then. It was an almost pathetic sense of accomplishment. A petty feat his mind was blowing entirely out of proportion. His lower leg was at once numb and burning, twice the size it should have been. Below that it was just really fucking painful. And he was about to laugh because on top of it all he’d just climbed up those stairs to get help from someone he wasn’t sure was even home. 

That was probably the scariest part- usually he could walk past a building and note that there were twelve people inside, that three of them were making dinner, one was taking a shower, four were watching TV on three different channels, the cat in apartment 4 hadn’t had his litter box cleaned in two days and the chinchilla the kids in apartment 3 were petsitting was probably not going home intact at the end of the week.

Right now, from inside the building, he could say with confidence only that there were some people here, that one of them was making curry, and that it made him want to throw up. The blood on his face indicated he’d probably taken some blow to the head. He sort of remembered it. That was probably a problem. Functionally, however, the fire still burned, was still there. Focusing on the minutiae was, seemingly in spite of that, nearly impossible. A concussion, probably. He’d definitely had worse ones though.

He focused as hard as he could, finding himself only dimly aware that someone was moving around in Foggy’s apartment. 

Thank God. 

He hauled himself over the last impossible step onto Foggy’s landing, pushing hard against the banister as his tibia seared at a moment of pressure. He was actively stopping himself from thinking the word fracture. Ribs were one thing. Debilitating at first, maybe, but with practice even severe pain in his trunk had become easier to hide than a broken leg. 

His right hand fumbled against the wall. There was no more railing, and for a moment he stood lost in an abyss of stale air conditioning and his own weird blood-sweat smell. Disconcerting, for someone who could usually sense through walls. 

He knew the relative position of the door from memory and he was able to limp to it, his hands curling into tight fists to keep him from making a sound, a deep, white-hot sensation taking over the otherwise numb part of his leg with each step. The doorframe was long-ago polished wood, now almost rough under his hand in patches. He sagged against it. Forced one still-fisted hand to pound on the door. 

Foggy took longer than usual to answer. Matt willed himself to stay upright, pressing the back of his head against the wood, schooling his breathing back into an artificial easiness. Finally, he felt the knob turn and the door open, could sense Foggy’s face near his own. Relief. He was safe. 

“Foggy, I know how this look-” He wasn’t sure what he was going to say after that. An apology, maybe, and a guilty request for asylum. The weird numb-burning had turned to throbbing, he really needed to sit down…

“Jesus, Matt.” Foggy had started to open the door, but stopped. The curry smell wafted out of the apartment. It took most of his conscious effort to stop himself from gagging. He slid a few inches down the doorframe, felt the door open a little more as Foggy’s hands clamped awkwardly under his arms, stopping his decent and allowing him to get a better grip on the door. “Hey, hey, what happened?” 

“Leg’s just a little weak…” He explained. 

“Foggy, did you just say Matt?” Matt felt Foggy freeze as Karen’s voice carried through the door. There was a wall between them, she was out of eyeshot. One of her legs bumped the table as she moved to stand, a plate knocked against a glass. They’d been having dinner. Curry. 

“Just a second!” Foggy called just a little too loudly, trying and failing to keep his voice steady, to get a handle on the situation. But it was already too late, Matt could hear her feet against the wood floor. “What do you want me to do, man?” Foggy whispered. 

Matt grimaced. Part of it was pain- staying upright was getting more difficult by the second. But the other part, the part that was more pressing in the next second or so, was that he’d managed, once again, to put himself in a position where one of his friends had to know his identity. If he kept the mask on, refused to reveal his identity, Karen would call 911. There was no lie he or Foggy could tell to stop her. If he forced the door shut before she rounded the partition, there was a very real chance he would pass out on Foggy’s landing. Whoever was the next up the stairs with a cell would call anyway. Nothing solved.

His good leg had started to shake, though he wasn’t sure whether it was from the added stress of picking up the other leg’s slack, or just that his whole being was on the verge of collapse and the last drop of adrenalin afforded by Karen’s presence had utterly exhausted him. He gritted his teeth and tried to force himself still, but it wasn’t working. Foggy’s grip shifted into a better position for keeping him upright. This had been a bad idea. 

But it had been his only idea. And now he was about to pay the price for his lack of creativity. And the lying. That would probably come up at some point too.

He knew the exact moment she saw him by the way her footsteps stopped. A quick step back, another pause. “That’s…That’s the Man in the Mask.” It was all she said, a statement of the obvious, coated in incredulity. And he knew she was looking at the blood flaking on his face and the way he was shaking and how Foggy was taking so much of his weight now. If she had ever expected to see his sorry ass again, it surely hadn’t been in the door to Foggy’s apartment, clearly beaten to hell. 

And she was certainly not expecting him to be Matt, anyway. But he could sense her putting two and two together. “Its me, yeah, its Matt.” No other explanation, because none would do. But it did need to come from him before she had to learn it the way Foggy had. 

“Oh.” A pause. “Shit.” 

But then he wasn’t quite sure what happened next. He ended up hitting the floor mostly conscious at least, he guessed, could feel the sting where he’d clearly taken his own weight across his forearms before slumping sideways. He didn’t quite remember it actually happening. Nor did he remember anyone pulling off his mask, or anyone laying him out completely flat. But he was now dimly aware that these things must have occurred for him to be in the position he was. 

The door was also closed, his good foot resting up against it, his body not quite fitting into Foggy’s small entryway. “Don’t call.” he said, knowing, again only vaguely, that they were arguing in dim whispers over him. “Call Claire.” And he hoped they figured out that the two weren’t supposed to be connected, that they could call Claire, just not 911 and… 

They stopped talking at once and began to check him over and he made himself let them. Made his hands relax as their’s moved over his body. Made his breathing quiet and steady, a semblance of okayness that wasn’t quite there. They were both shaking as bad as he was. So he maintained icy control as his body cried out for him to gasp, for his fists to clench with pain and embarrassment. 

He’d already screwed them over enough for one lifetime. He didn’t want to take more advantage by showing just how freaked he was, just how much his leg and head hurt. They didn’t need to see that. 

And the fact that she was still by his side meant maybe what he’d done hadn’t sunk in yet. Maybe tomorrow the onslaught would come. The proclamation that she didn’t want to work in the same space as he did anymore. That he’d lied to her a hundred or more times. He needed to hear it. He’d take it. This couldn’t happen again. 

Foggy’d found his leg, and he heard a muffled expletive that he didn’t want to make out. His face contorted involuntarily, all his effort had to go to not making a sound himself. Not letting them know he was in pain. They shouldn’t have to comfort him. He’d done this to himself when he made the decision to go out there and take on Hell’s Kitchen dressed as a damn ninja. 

But then Karen put her hand on his shoulder, and he wanted to believe her with everything he had when she echoed Foggy’s words. “We’ll help, it’ll be okay.”


	9. Matt Chills in a Dumpster, Foggy Stops By

He could still feel the plastic against his face. Could still feel how the air had gotten thin and hot and humid with his breath, how when he breathed, when he’d fought against the sticky film, he’d felt for sure he would never feel fresh air again. 

He could still feel the drug in his system too, whatever it had been. A light, bitter taste in his mouth. How even now, hours after, when most of the purposeful movement was back in his limbs he felt like he was just on the verge of slipping back into unconsciousness. It was only a lingering ounce of adrenalin that kept him wearily on his guard. 

He was aware that he was lying on a splintered piece of particleboard, yet again in a dumpster, in an alley, the smells of rotting indian food and damp newspaper mixing badly in the humid air. With the nature of the heat and the quiet foreign chatter and footsteps he vaguely knew it was evening. He could hear a fryer going through the wall, could smell the boiling fat, the heat off the four cooks’ bodies in the kitchen. 

Last he’d known of the world, it had been the cool, quiet, morning part of night. At least eighteen hours ago. At least. 

The intervening time was a weird blur- half-understood shouts, seconds of terrifying euphoria between pain and plastic. His scalp still stung- he could feel places where it was crusted with dried blood. And then what recent memory he had was of falling, of coming down hard on something that dug painfully into his shoulderblade. The corner of the particleboard maybe. His back ached with it. 

The adrenalin was waning, threatening to let exhaustion and the last vestiges of the drug take him out again. If he didn’t get moving he would probably be here until the poor busboy took out the trash for the night. Waking up in the emergency room. Not something he wanted. 

He dragged his hand against the board, feeling it lag weakly. Odd. It didn’t hurt, didn’t feel weak, just didn’t quite do what his brain told it to. He paused, confused for a second before he was able to force it under himself. He took one long, deep breath and put everything he had into leveraging himself onto his side. More difficult than he cared to admit. 

From here it was slightly easier. He had more leverage in this position, could use both arms to a greater extent. He gingerly made it to all fours, sweat breaking out on his forehead from the effort. Arms shaking. It felt like he’d just spent the last eight hours at Fogworth’s. He let himself lean against the inside of the dumpster, his body hitting the sheetmetal with a dull thud. No energy left to climb out, but he’d already put so much into the pathetic attempt that he refused to collapse again. 

Foggy Nelson had come to the decision that he really didn’t like club life. Maybe it was a side effect of being best friends with someone who couldn’t appreciate the harsh lighting and endless streams of faces, but tonight the pulsing music and sweat and alcohol just seemed unappealing. Plus the girl he’d gone with had gotten carried away in the crowd. She was probably at some other club by now, taking in the Hell’s Kitchen nightlife with someone else. 

To be honest, he was okay with that. He was welcoming the quiet summer night. Maybe Karen was feeling a trip to Josie’s…

He decided to cut through the alley back to his apartment first. People seemed to think bad things happened in alleys, and usually he’d agree, but this one, for some reason, was kind of working for him tonight. 

thunk!

Foggy stopped. There was a dumpster out behind the indian place and the noise had definitely come from inside it. “…Hello? Somebody there?” He asked cautiously, noncommittally. He swallowed, looking around rather nervously. Maybe this is why people hated alleys so much. 

uuuugh…

A groan. Definitely from inside the dumpster. Someone, then, rather than something. Foggy took a deep breath, stooping to pick up a shard of wood. He held it in front of him the way he figured Jason Bourne might. “uhh, someone there?” he asked. “Cause I gotta warn you…” He looked at the makeshift shank he was holding. His shadow on the brick looked vaguely threatening. 

“Foggy, help…” It was definitely a familiar voice now. He let the shank fall to the ground. 

“…Matt?” He cautiously approached. 

“Who else… dumpster… this time of night” The voice sounded utterly exhausted, the words followed by a round of pained breathing.

“What happened? Why are you…?” He let the words trail off as he peered over the rim of the dumpster, seeing little more than a black lump in the muted, artificial orange light of the alley. “Is this where you’ve been all day? Did you call in sick from the dumpster?” Matt seemed to manage a weak glare. “Right, yeah, sorry. But jeez, Matt, what happened?” A sort of silence hung in the air. 

“Help… me out. I’ll talk.” Matt said. A dry-blood-smeared hand reached shakily up to the rim of the dumpster. It looked almost surreal, like Foggy was in the middle of some sort of zombie apocalypse movie. 

“Hey, hey, take it easy, okay?” He wasn’t sure that was what you were supposed to say in this situation, but the words came out easily and he got a grip on Matt’s wrist. His skin was almost cool with sweat and the remnants of the blood. “I got you, Matt. Can you give me your other hand?” There were another few seconds of silence as it seemed all of Matt’s remaining energy was going into that command. With what looked like intense effort, his other hand came up. It missed the rim of the dumpster by about two inches, but Foggy was able to catch his other wrist before it fell back into the darkness. 

“Are you hurt anywhere?” Foggy asked, knowing it was a moot point. Of course Matt was hurt, but Matt seemed to take his meaning. Shaking his head to indicate he would be functionally intact even if Foggy pulled him from the dumpster. “Okay” 

Matt was a lot heavier than he looked, especially the nearly dead-weight version Foggy was working with. He got Matt’s hands over the edge of the container, the grabbed handfuls of Matt’s shirt. “Uhh, can you stand up? Like if I help?” Another pause, another halfhearted nod. “Okay, uh, one, two-” He pulled with everything he had, and Matt seemed to give his all as well, shaking almost violently as he stood just enough for Foggy to bear hug him. 

“There, okay, cool.” Foggy said, realizing from the street this must have looked real interesting. Two men seemingly hugging over the edge of a dumpster. One almost pulled clear by the height of the container and the other man’s weight. Almost poetic. The interpretive dance of their increasingly weird lives. But it was New York, he thought, they could deal. 

He walked back a few steps and supported Matt the best he could as he fell to the concrete. They both sat, then, for a few minutes. Matt’s back supported by Foggy’s, both of them breathing heavily. Foggy cracked a smile. “You need to get another hobby, dude.” There was a snort, almost a laugh, in response, but it quickly died to silence again. “My apartment’s only like a half a block from here, think you can make it?” He paused. “They, uh, finally fixed the elevator and everything.” 

“Yeah” Matt said, the word itself seeming to take effort. Foggy wasn’t sure he believed it, but having no idea what was wrong with his friend, he needed to get somewhere he could safely call Claire and find out what the hell had happened. 

They made their way the half block to Foggy’s apartment. It was a little too early to sell the stumbling drunk friend story, he thought, but this part of town no one seemed to care, just like a second ago no one seemed to think twice about him pulling this guy out of the trash a few minutes ago. By the time they got to the apartment, Foggy was taking almost all of his friend’s weight. He laid Matt down on the couch, then pulled over a chair. He caught his breath, watching Matt do the same. 

“Okay, what the hell happened to you?” Foggy asked a few minutes later, when they had both settled in. He waited a second, but got no response. A jolt of terror struck him, just for a second. But Matt’s chest was rising and falling evenly, no blood seemed to still be flowing. For now Matt could sleep.


End file.
